‘There’s Never Been a Drug Law That Wasn’t Tied to Race’

[whirlygigspin]

Here is the quote, if you haven’t heard it, attributed by a recent story in Harper’s to John Ehrlichman, domestic policy advisor to Richard Nixon, referring to Nixon’s declaration of a war on drugs:

"You want to know what this was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies, the anti-war left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities....We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did...."


http://fair.org/home/theres-never-been-a-drug-law-that-wasnt-tied-to-race/


*Janine Jackson interviewed asha bandele and Laura Carlsen about the War on Drugs can be found at link